What typifies Classical Political Theory is that the purpose
of government was to create a noble citizenry.In the political theories of Plato and Aristotle, but even in the
thinking of the Roman Empire, you find that the mission of government was
cultivating and civilizing the citizens.Since the mission of government is to form the character of the
governed, the government has broad authority to regulate the lives of the
governed.Authority must be commensurate
with responsibility, so if the government has the responsibility to see that
people turn out ok, governments must therefore have the authority to tell
people what to do.This is a very
paternalistic model of government.Note
further that evaluation of government (a good government/ a bad government) turns
on the effectiveness that the government demonstrates in realizing its
ends (functional account of good).

Now, it would be an overstatement to say this was universally
accepted in in Classical times.One can
see the Sophocles play “Antigone” as examining/questioning the relationship
between the individual and the State.

Medieval Political
Theory

Typical of Medieval Political Theory is the notion that the
Universe is a Divine Monarchy with God as the ultimate source of
authority.While we all must be obedient
to God, there is a “chain of command” so to speak.Throughout the middle ages there was a debate
about who, precisely, was “second in command.”The Roman Catholic Church maintained that it was the bishop of Rome, the
Pope (although there were some disputes about this within the church).So, for instance, it was Pope Leo III who crowned
Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, in the year 800.This was a very public way of demonstrating
that the Pope is the one bestowing the title, and the Pope is in the position
to bestow this title because his authority comes directly from God.(And what the Pope giveth, the Pope can
taketh away.)As the papacy's power grew
during the Middle Ages, Popes and emperors came into conflict.In one such conflictHoly Roman Emperor Henry IV was
excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII.As a
show of penance, the story goes, Henry stood in the snow outside the gates of
the castle where the Pope was staying for three days begging the pope to
rescind the excommunication.

Now this was not just because Henry wanted to once again
resume his membership within the Church.In medieval political theory, loyalty was assured in the Universal Chain
of Command by oaths of allegiance.But these
oaths need not be honored to one who was not part of the Church.Once excommunicated, no one who had sworn an
oath to Henry needed to honor that (including oaths to pay taxes, give crops,
use of land, military support, etc.)Excommunicated, Henry was very much politically weaken, his just
authority in question, and thus vulnerable to political challenge.

Later in the Middle Ages arose the idea of the Divine Right of Kings.This theory claims that kings receive their
authority directly from God.The
thinking here was that if God did want the King to be the King, He (God) could/would
remove him.The fact that the King is
King is itself evidence that it is God’s will.Therefore kings were answerable only to God (not the Pope) and it was
therefore sinful for their subjects to resist them. Further, this put the king on
equal footing with the pope.James VI /
I (1566 – 1625) upheld the doctrine in his speeches and writings. This theory
was supported by his son Charles I and his chief adviser, William Laud, the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud argued that the king had been appointed by God
and people who disagreed with him were bad Christians, disobedient to the will
of God.

Modern Political
Theory:

By the time the Enlightenment was underway, supernatural
explanations of political power and systems seem unreasonable and no longer
tenable.As Max Weber has put it, the hallmark
of the modern is disenchantment.In a
1917 lecture in Munich, “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber claimed “the
disenchantment of the world,” as a hallmark feature of modern Western
society.Weber saw this as a development
of scientific advancement an operating assumption of which is that “there are
no mysterious incalculable forces” and that “one need no longer have recourse
to magical means in order to master or implore spirits.”

"The increasing
intellectualization and rationalization does not, therefore, indicate an
increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives. it
means something else, namely, the knowledge or belief that if one but wished
one could learn it at any time. hence, it means that there are no mysterious
incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle,
master all things by calculation. this means that the world is disenchanted.
One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore
the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed.
Technical means and calculations perform the service. This above all is what
intellectualization means"[1]

What was sought instead were rational, scientific
explanations of the rise of government and their just right to govern.In a way they turned the medieval pyramid of
power upside down.Rather than claiming
authority came from the top down, modern political theory suggests that
authority comes from the bottom up, that governments derive their just right to
govern from the consent of the governed.We will look in some detail at the theories
of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.As you
will see, the political theories presented by these two philosophers were
extremely influential in the founding of the Unites States.

Three terms both of these theories use:

Natural Law: Laws which hold whether a government exists or
not.

Social Contract: An
agreement among people to share certain interests and to make certain
compromises for good of them all.The
result of this contract may be the formation and legitimizing of a governing
political body.

State of Nature:The real or imagined situation where you have
a community of people, but there is no officiating government.

Thomas Hobbes:

Hobbes wrote the classic Leviathan
where he considers the question of government and its justification.One way to figure out why we have a government
is to try to imagine what life would be like without one.Hence he proceeds to consider the “State of
Nature.”

What life would be like in the State of Nature, where humans
are “governed” by nothing other than Natural Law?Note, we would have prefect liberty to
whatever we wanted whenever we wanted without fear of government
interference.This may sound like a good
thing, even desirable.But Hobbes
doesn’t think so.On the contrary, he
claims that our ruthless competition with one another to satisfy individual
desires and establish our own security will quickly lead to what Hobbes calls
"the war of each against all," a "state of nature" in which
life is "nasty, brutish, and short."

“During the time men live without a
common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war;
and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

"To this war of every man
against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The
notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where
there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force,
and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.

"No arts; no letters; no
society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent
death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."[2]

Why is this so?Well
in the State of Nature humans will only be subject to Natural Law.Predicting their behavior in the State of
Nature then requires a working from a concepts of “Human Nature,” that is, the
natural laws that govern human behavior and motivations. We cannot imagine how
the “natural” human will act (or collective of humans acts) unless we have an
understanding of human nature.Hobbes provides
this.He was both a Ethical Egoist, and
a Psychological Egoist.The first is a
moral view about what makes right actions right.The second is a psychological theory about
what motivates human actions.According
to Hobbes then, human beings are primarily self-interested and desire-driven.We are compelled by our nature to do what we
believe to be in our own best interest.This is the one thing you can count on whether in or out of the State of
Nature.

Men are equal by nature.
Even though one may be stronger than others, there is no way the same man
can survive the use of a weapon or five men together against him.

From equality proceeds
diffidence: If two men desire the same thing, they will become enemies and
they will try to destroy each other.

From Diffidence proceeds War:
Once the first enemy is destroyed, a man will go to war till he sees there
is no other who is a threat to him or his interests. In this stage, no man
can secure himself. He can never stop fighting in order to maintain his
own conservation.

But why should life be so contentious in the State of
Nature?Why can’t we all “just get
along?”Well the biggest threat to my security is the
liberty of my fellow humans(you).Conversely, I am the biggest threat to your security.My security can only be had if I neutralize
you as a threat, that is, I can harm you, but you cannot harm me.But if I ever achieved that, that would
destroy your security.So you work
constantly to see that that doesn’t happen and you can always harm me (which
effectively undermines my security).According to Hobbes, people are not naturally
capable of virtue and wisdom. Concepts of “Virtue,” Wisdom” or “Justice” are
not “natural” and do not arise until one leaves the State of Nature.They cannot arise when life is a “war of all
against all” and a daily struggle for self-preservation.We are “at war” with each other in very much
the same way that the US and the old USSR were in an arms race during the Cold
War.Each was a threat to the other’s
security.Each sought to have “first
strike” capability without fear of retaliation.Had one side achieved this, however, the security of the other would
evaporate. Neither side did and the
“war” went on for decades.

So how can we extricate ourselves from this mess?How can we leave the state of nature.Well one way that won’t work is just to
promise one another the behave better and treat one another nicer.Why is that?To explain we must look at “The Prisoners’ Dilemma.”

The Prisoners’
Dilemma:

Imagine the following scenario:

You and I commit some crime together.The police do not have enough evidence to put
either of us away for a very long time.They really need to get at least one of us to confess.So they devise a plan.They keep us separated.One officer comes to me with a deal.She tells me that if I confess and you do
not, I will get off scot free.However,
if I don’t confess and you do, I get 20 years.If we BOTH confess, we will each get ten years.(They don’t tell me this, but I know that if
we both simply keep our mouths shut, we’ll each only get 6 months.)Further, they tell me that they will be
making the same deal with you.I don’t
know what you are going to do; I can’t talk to you, so I just have to
guess.Assuming I am rational and
self-interested (as Hobbes supposes) what will I/ should I do?

Here a table of my options:

Things I cannot control

You confess.

You do not confess.

Things I can control

I confess.

I get 10 years

I get off with not time served

I do not confess.

I get 20 years

I get a 6 month sentence.

Well I’m gonna confess.I have a shot at the best and I avoid the
worst.But of course, if you get the
same deal, and you are just as rational and self-interested as I, you’ll do the
same thing and the result is that we will both be going away for 10 years.

Now suppose the cops make a mistake.Accidentally they allow us to sit
together.I quickly explain the deal I
was offer and you tell me that you got the same deal.“Well you know what we should do,” I say to
you, “we should both keep our mouths shut.I’ll promise you that I won’t confess if you promise not to confess as
well.”You agree and promise not to
confess.

What should I do now?

CONFESS!

(and of course, so should you.)

This scenario is called
The Prisoners' Dilemma.

The Prisoners' Dilemma: The hypothetical case used to illustrate
Hobbes point that strictly pursuing one's own self-interest in an intelligent fashion
results not in the best or even the second best possible situation.

It’s a dilemma because neither one of us is doing something
stupid or irrational.On the contrary,
we are both acting rationally and pursuing our own best interests in an
intelligent fashion.Nevertheless I am
not getting my best option or even my second best option, and neither are you.People in the State of Nature are in the very
same position, according to Hobbes.They
can’t escape the State of Nature simply by promising each other not to attack
at the next opportunity.The moment one
of them lets his or her guard down the others would be compelled, by the law of
human nature, to at advantage of the opportunity to attack.

Now, imagine our Prisoners’ Dilemma again, only this time we
not only promise not to confess, but we contract a “promise-enforcer” and we tell
this enforcer that he should kill either one of us if we defect from our
agreement.Both of us would have very
good reason NOT to confess (the threat of death) and both of us would have the
reasonable expectation that the other will also not confess.Since it is in my best interest now to keep
quiet I will, and so will you and we will have not the best option (0 time),
but at least will get the second best (6 months.)

Put another way, the best scenario for me would be for me to
do whatever I want and get away with it and you can’t do anything about
it.But I can’t really have that so I am
willing to compromise and reign in my behavior (no stealing, murdering, cheating,
etc.) provided that everyone else to the same.[3]And we hire an enforcer to make sure we all
keep the social contract.That’s the
Sovereign.

This is how sovereign governments come to be and are
justified, according to Hobbes.We contract
with one another to create a Sovereign enforcer who will enforce the “Social
Contract.”It will punish any who defect
from the contract and fails to conform his or her behavior or threatens the
security of fellow contractors.Such a
contract does not exist in paper. However, we are bound by it even if we never
signed or saw such an agreement.Living
in society implies the acceptance of such contracts, its rules and obedience of
its laws. Ignorance is not an excuse. Further, it is in my own best interest to
support the Sovereign and the Social Contract since this is all the stands
between me and the chaos of the State of Nature.Anything I do to threaten or destabilize
either is ultimately not in my own best interest.

The Social Contract, according to Hobbes, is an agreement of
equal selfish and self-seeking persons not to commit mutual murder.

Liberty:

By 'liberty' Hobbes means the absence of restraints or
impediments on one's powers to act.So
in the State of Nature, where there is no government, the individual has
“perfect liberty.”Now initially that
may seem like a good thing, even desirable, but Hobbes argues that in fact is
not.

Hobbes points out that in the “State of Nature” where there
is no government nor governmental censorship we have perfect liberty, but it is
useless.“Free Speech” only takes on
value within a civil society.Therefore if censorship is required to safeguard that free speech, it is
justified.From Hobbes’s perspective, we
have nothing to complain about if the sovereign chooses to limit free speech,
even to limit it severely.We had all
the free speech we could stand in the State of Nature, but it did us no
good.We give up our liberty and invest
it in the Sovereign and the return on this investment is a civil society more
secure and predicable than the State of Nature.It is in our own best interest then (and thus required by natural law)
that we support the stability of the civil society and accept the restrictions
on individual liberty imposed by the Sovereign,when, in its view, these restrictions are required to maintain order.

Revolution and defying the Sovereign would only be in our
own best interest (and thus permitted/ justified by Natural Law) if life under
the sovereign is worse that life in the State of Nature.But life it the State of Nature, according to
Hobbes, was SO terrible, that one can hardly imagine a scenario where life
under the Sovereign is worse.The only
one that Hobbes can imagine is where the sovereign has commanded you to certain
death.(At least in the State of Nature
you have a fighting chance.)

With regard to "justice" Thomas Hobbes believed
that when and where there is no government there is no such thing as
justice.What we call justice is a
creation of government.

For Hobbes, the proper role of government to provide
security to the citizen and prevent them from committing mutual murder.

John Locke and the
Social Contract

John Locke also employs the notions of Natural Law, State of
Nature and Social Contract, but his account is strikingly different from
Hobbes.For one thing, he disagrees with
Hobbes’s Psychological Egoism.He
believe that in addition to self-interest, we are also motivated beneficence
and the Common Good.We are therefore naturally
disposed to cooperate and collaborate with our fellow humans.Further, we have a natural appreciation of
our own rights and by extension, the rights of others.So life in the State of Nature is not that
bad.This paints a picture of a civil
orderly collective.

Why bother with forming a government then?Well, while we have natural appreciation of
rights and justice, we inevitably enter into disputes where our personal bias
prevents us from seeing clearly what the just resolution would be.We want the just resolution, but find it
difficult to see what that it.Therefore,
we need a neutral third party to resolve such disputes.So the Social Contract then is the agreement
that the governed negotiates with the Sovereign.We invest our liberty in the Sovereign in
return that Sovereign ensures justice and rights protection.

This is the role of government then: to secure the justice
and protect the rights of its citizens, rights which we had a natural
appreciation of in the State of Nature, but which we could only imperfectly protect
on our own.By no means to we give up
our liberty or rights upon entering into a Civil Society; indeed is for our
rights protection that we create the government in the first place.For Locke governments arise and are justified
by the natural impulse of humans to live and work together for their mutual
benefit and social development seeking to protect their own and one another
rights and justice.

This is the dominant thinking behind the Declaration of
Independence.Consider the opening
lines:

When in the Course of human events
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such
has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The history of the present King of
Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in
direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

In other word, we were telling King George III, in the words
of “The Apprentice,” “You’re fired!”(But we will explain why we’re firing you.)The rest of the Declaration reads like a
legal indictment. Rather than protect
our rights and ensure justice, King George trampled our rights, according to The
Declaration, thereby providing us with the justification to “dissolve the
political bands” which tied us to him and set up another government (presumably
one that will do a better job).

"We have no government armed
with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and
religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest
cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is
designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any
other.

…Neither the wisest constitution
nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose
manners are universally corrupt.[4]

Censorship

Under Classical Political Theory, censorship is not only
justified, it might well be the duty of the government to censor materials that
impede the development character.Plato,
for instance, advocates censoring portions of the Iliad for the potentially harmful effects he thought those passages
might have.He also was suspicious of
highly emotional art because he feared it stirred up emotions which was
psychologically destabilizing for the individual and therefore harmful to
society in general.[5]

Under Medieval Political Theory, censorship is allowed.We are duty bound to follow orders from our
superiors and there are really no claims you can make on those above you in the
chain of command: they answer to their superiors, not to you.It is also worth noting that all things are
evaluated according to their tendency to lead us to God and to perform our God-given
duties.Artand other verbal and visual imagery should be
so evaluated by those charged by God to see that people follow His will.

Under Modern Political Theory, censorship is certainly
permitted from a Hobbesian perspective.You have given up your rights and now only entitled to what the
Sovereign grants you.Locke on the other
hand would defend you rights to freedom of expression, etc.That does not mean that no censorship could
ever be justified.However, it puts the
burden of proof on those who wish to limit your liberty by censoring.Such proofs generally take the form of
consequentialist arguments.But as with
all consequentialist arguments, one would need to demonstrate the clear causal
connection between the material to be censored and the harmful effects that the
material is supposed to produce.

In the case of pornography, for instance, there does not
seem to be a strong direct connection between pornography and harmful societal
consequences.Keep in mind that the porn
industry is a multibillion dollar industry and growing.It is probably more prevalent today than at
any other time in human history.But we
do not see sex crimes or violence towards women, etc. worse now than at any
other time in human history.While it is
true that many sex offenders often tell us that they were first interested in
pornography and then needed greater and greater stimulations until this finally
manifested in criminal acts, this is anecdotal and not does not constitute real
scientific study.It may only serve to
show that sick people have bad reactions to porn, but they may well have bad
reactions to Disney Movies too for that matter.As a multibillion dollar industry, there must be a LOT ofpeople patronizing porn, the vast majority of
whom are not assaulting women or harming children it would seem.

[3]
Interesting that Plato anticipates this line of argument in his Republic and argues against it.The character Glaucon
suggests that morality is only a social construction, a compromise because we
can’t have what we really want (i.e. to do whatever we want whenever we want
and get away with it.) But if ever we could avoid sanction there is nothing we
would deem “immoral.”He tells the story
of the Myth of Gyges who discovers a magic ring that
has the power to make him invisible.While invisible he can do whatever he likes and avoid detection.Even the gods don’t know what he’s doing when
he is invisible.(Remember the Greeks
did not think their gods were omniscient or could read minds; they could only
see what you were doing, assuming you were visible while doing it.)

Glaucon posits:

Suppose now that there were
two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other;
no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in
justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could
safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any
one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all
respects be like a god among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the
actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this
we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or
because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of
necessity, for wherever anyone thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is
unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more
profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been
supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining
this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what
was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched
idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up
appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.
— Plato's Republic, 360b-d (Jowett trans.)

[5] It
is worth noting that this is very similar to current arguments in favor of
censoring pornography.Now, Aristotle
disputed Plato on this position with respect to emotional art.Aristotle agreed that emotional art did
indeed “stir up” our emotions, but it then allows us to discharge these
emotions in a harmless and psychologically healthy way.It is therefore good for society. This is
his doctrine of Catharsis.Notice this too parallel arguments which
seek to defend pornography, claiming that, while porn appeals to our sexual interests,
it allows us to discharge our sexual impulses in a harmless way.This is it good for the individual and
for society.Similar arguments can be
fashioned about violence in the media, sports and video games.